News & Stats

Barn Notes

Bret Calhoun's Operation Now Monmouth Based

Posted Saturday, Jun 30, 2012

Trainer Bret Calhoun, perennially ranked among the top 20 trainers in North America, was hands-on in his barn at Monmouth on
Saturday morning and will be a familiar sight on the backside from here
on.

“I just got in. I’ll be here for the rest of
the summer. I’ll make this my base now and travel from here,” said Calhoun after
five more of his horses got off the van and settled into their stalls. “I’ve
never based my operation at Monmouth before but now it makes the most
sense.”

For the
past few years, Calhoun has run his summer operation from Delaware Park
and kept a division of more than 50 horses at Churchill Downs, so after the
spring meet in Louisville closed at the end of June, he had to
send his charges to other tracks in order to run.

“It was a logistical nightmare,” said
Calhoun. “The management here is great and very cooperative. There are a lot of
options here with so many tracks located within only a couple of hours. Ideally,
I would like to run every horse out of the stall, but it doesn’t always work out
that way.”

Until Calhoun’s arrival, assistant Tom
Morgan was in charge of the division here and the barn had one win, two seconds
and one third from seven starts. After 5 more horses arrive on Monday there will
be a total of 30 under the shedrow.

Through June 29, Calhoun was the
17th ranked trainer in North
America with 91 wins from 381 starts and $2,929,263 in
earnings.